Countdown

Meet Joe Ledger. Army Ranger vet. Tough Baltimore cop. Now a member of a joint task force heading in on a warehouse raid. Lots of guns, bullets, and a body in a big blue box... "Countdown" is a short story that introduces the listener to an action adventure hero in the making and, whets the appetite for more. What happens next? Who is Mr. Church? What's with the tinted glasses inside? The Vanilla Wafers? Is Mr. Church a good thing? A bad thing? An X-Files thing? The answers to all this and more await in the first full-length novel in the Joe Ledger trilogy, Patient Zero.

Ray Porter renders the character of Joe Ledger with natural ease. Jonathan Maberry, while generous with the mil-fic elements, also fleshes out the protagonist with an interior life beyond the jarhead mentality you might expect. Joe Ledger is smart, funny and most importantly, human. Ray Porter, in his turn, is Joe Ledger, inhabiting the character so completely that there is no disjunct between the writing and the narration.

Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, Countdown, 10/02/2011 ( )

A more detailed account than what appears in the book and gives some nice background on the character, but makes the recap feel repetitive. Or the other way around, depending on which you find first. ( )

Zombie SWAT surprise.

http://media.hbpub.com/stmartins/maberry/maberrystory.pdf

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2009/03/countdown-jonathan-maberry.html ( )